In the world of mathematics, the date represents a palindrome, a sequence that is the same when read forwards or backwards.

Dr Mary Coupland, a senior lecturer in mathematics at the University of Technology, Sydney, said such dates were popular with maths teachers.

"I know a lot of maths teachers would be pointing it out to their students and asking them if they can think of other dates that are palindromic," she said.

"Maths teachers love things like this. There's a day called Pi. If you go with the American system and you put the month first, it would be the 14th of March, 3.14."

In Silicon Valley, the hotbed of technological innovation in the United States, and where the date would be of binary significance, locals are planning to celebrate "Nerd New Year".

A large party is being organised, with money raised for 11 charities, and includes - perhaps not surprisingly - a fair amount of drinking and robot building.

"As the sun sinks behind its state-mandated horizon, the night-time sky illuminates the ticking numbers of a 13-foot LCD countdown clock as it inches toward 11.11pm. After the countdown, guests can keep the party going for 49 additional minutes until the festivities draw to a close at midnight," the Los Angeles Times reported the party invite as saying.

Weddings and births

In Sydney, the Chippendale office of the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths & Marriages will be performing a record number of ceremonies in a day - 65, spokesman Nathan Cockle said.

"We've had to hire an extra venue at the Medina hotel next to Railway Square," he said.

"We've dressed up the windows in our main office with balloon displays and extra flowers ... Couples will receive a commemorative frame to mark the special date."

In South Korea, where the identification number for all residents in the country starts with a person's birth date, mothers were inundating hospitals with requests for a caesarean section delivery, Reuters reported.

Seoul Newspaper said hospitals were reporting a 20 per cent increase in the number of appointments for caesarean births.

"There's always people with due dates in January who want to deliver on the first of the month, but this seems more unusual - trying to set delivery so they can have the ID number 111111," a maternity clinic staff told the newspaper.

November 11 is already significant in Korea for another reason. It's known as Pepero Day, or Sweetest Day, the Korean version of Valentine's Day.

Just another day in the cosmos

But for astronomers, the date is an artificial construction that holds no special meaning.

"If you pick a calendar, it would be a different day, a different month and a different year, so it is not just our one calendar.

"I supposed it will be the progression of time, but that's like New Year's Eve."

Religious and classical studies specialist Alan Lenzi at the University of the Pacific in California told MSNBC it was natural for people to search for meaning in numbers.

"Cognitive scientists have demonstrated that the human brain is hard-wired to look for meaningful patterns in the sensory data it collects from the world," Assistant Professor Lenzi, who studies biblical numerology, said.

"Numbers that are already significant to us, such as calendar dates that also coincidentally fall into an obvious pattern, become doubly significant. 11.11.11 is another example of people doing what people are cognitively prone to do - find significance."

And whatever people believed about the date, it could serve as a "good excuse to get out and have a drink and a bit of a party", Dr Jacob said.